Page 13 of Run of Ruin

He tilted his head, amusement flickering in his eyes as he lifted his glass in a mock toast. “Maybe you should be.”

There was something in his voice, teasing, but edged with something darker. A reminder of the reason he was here. A reason I hadn’t dared to ask about yet.

I held his gaze for a beat longer than I meant to, then raised my own glass and clinked it gently against his. “Maybe,” I said, my voice quieter now. “But I’m not.”

“Good.”

Something about the way he said it, low, unbothered, maybe even a little impressed, sent an unexpected warmth to my core. Not the alcohol this time. Something else.

And I didn’t know what to do with that.

“You wanted Rexen to place in the medical trial. That’s why you voted for him,” Ezra said, not accusing, just stating it like it was already obvious. “For your brother?”

The truth hit harder coming from him. Not because it wasn’t my little secret anymore, the entirety of Nexum probably knew by now, but because hearing it aloud made it real. Tangible. And painful.

I clenched my jaw, trying not to let it show. “Yeah,” I said through gritted teeth. “His condition is treatable... if we had anyone back home to treat him.”

I could feel the anger rise like an unrelenting wave. I hated how easily it surfaced, but I was tired of apologizing for it. Tired of what we were forced to live without in the Canyon Collective. What my brother had to live without.

Ezra took a drink, watching me. “Who was the girl youwere speaking to? The one you left your brother with. She looked familiar.”

“Ava,” I said, my heart skipping a beat. “My best friend. She’s practically Jax’s big sister too. You might recognize her because her brother was our Challenger a few years back.”

Ezra’s brows lifted in recognition, and he made a low sound in his throat. “Yeah... yeah, that’s it. He’s the one who…”

He trailed off, the rest of the sentence hanging between us like smoke.

Killed himself.

That’s what he was going to say.

“Yeah,” I murmured, the word tasting bitter. “That one.”

The grief came creeping back in like a tide, slow and heavy. It always did when I thought of him. What he went through. What the Run did to him. He came back with a body intact but a spirit broken. He hadn’t placed above last place for a single trial, and somehow to the people who’d sent him, that became unforgivable.

The cruelest part of the Reclamation Run was how the rewards were structured. As long as all ten Challengers remained alive and competing, the resource prizes were tiered. First place earned a full year’s supply, enough to sustain an entire Collective. Second and third place still walked away with a meaningful share. Fourth and fifth got something, though it was barely enough to stretch. But sixth place and below? Typically nothing.

And that system only got harsher as competitors started to die off, which they always did. Fewer survivors meant fewer rewards. If only five were left standing, only the top three received anything at all.

Ava’s brother had been one of just three Challengers who made it out alive that year. He placed third in the last fewtrials. But with only three left, that also made him the last, and last place, no matter how brutal the odds or how hard the fight, meant going home empty-handed.

The night he got back to Canyon, they were waiting, people who had voted for him to die, then cheered for him. All of a sudden they hurled their hatred like knives. Night after night. At his door. At his name. The Collective that sentenced him to death didn’t welcome him home alive, they blamed him. As if failure to bring back resources meant he didn’t deserve to breathe.

The threats. The harassment. The utter isolation.

It was too much for him. And Ava. I saw the toll it was taking on them first hand. They both lost so much of themselves in those weeks following the Run.

He proved to me, in the most heartbreaking way, that survival wasn’t the same thing as freedom. That making it home didn’t mean you were safe.

Didn’t mean you were whole.

Didn’t mean you’d been spared.

Ezra nodded slowly, mulling that over. “You don’t have any other family that could look after your brother?”

I looked down at my drink and swallowed hard, thankful for the change in subject, but not all that comfortable with the newest line of questioning either. “Nope. It’s just the two of us.”

There was a beat of silence where my guilt felt suffocating. How could I just leave him like that? I hated myself. But then I tried to remind myself that I was doing this for him too. To get him the resources he needed. I guess both things could be true at once. I could be doing the right thing, and still hate myself for it.

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